The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Hicks to cooperate with House probe
WASHINGTON — Greenwich native Hope Hicks has agreed to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee’s wide-ranging probe of alleged misconduct in office by President Donald Trump.
Hicks was as close to Trump as any of his deputies, both prior to the election and afterward through her departure from the White House last year. The document request sent to Hicks earlier this month ran four pages long, asking the 30-year-old former model and Greenwich High School lacrosse team co-captain for information on a multitude of controversies involving her former boss.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said in his letter to Hicks that he wanted documents on Trump’s efforts to soften the blow against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, his dismissal of FBI Director James Comey and his pushing out former Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from oversight of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation.
Nadler also asked for documents relating to the meeting of Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in New York on June 9, 2016. Among those present: Thencampaign chairman Paul Manafort of New Britain, who was just sentenced to a total of seven-anda-half years for infractions relating to his representing Ukraine’s then-president and pro-Russia party.
Nadler spokesman Daniel Schwarz confirmed that Hicks had agreed to cooperate. He provided no other details.
Hicks, who took a job with Fox as chief communications officer, was one of 81 people who received letters from Nadler requesting documents. The others included a Who’s Who of Trump’s presidency and long career as a real-estate wheeler dealer in New York. Among them are sons Donald Jr. and Eric, former White House Counsel Don McGahn, son-in-law Jared Kushner and political consultant Roger Stone.
“President Trump and his administration face wide-ranging allegations of misconduct that strike at the heart of our constitutional order,” Nadler said in his cover letter. “Congress has a constitutional duty to serve as a check and balance against any such excesses.”
The investigation is one of many undertaken by the House since the 2018 mid-term elections put it back in Democratic hands for the first time since 2011.
Hicks has had to walk a tightrope between loyalty to Trump — who referred to her variously as “Hopee” and “the Hopester” — and entanglement in the ongoing investigations of Mueller and congressional committees.
She comes from a Greenwich family well-schooled in politics. Her father, public relations executive Paul Hicks III, met her mother, Caye, while both were congressional staffers in Washington. Paul Hicks was chief of staff for Rep. Steward B. McKinney, R-Conn.